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There was some good news for the PCs in York-Simcoe, where incumbent Julia Munro retained her seat for the Tories.

Liberal Newmarket-Aurora candidate Chris Ballard.

With nearly half of Newmarket-Aurora polls reporting, Ballard had collected more than 43 per cent of the vote while Twinney had 36 per cent.

Thursday night’s election means a new MPP in Newmarket-Aurora for the first time since 1995, when Klees first won the seat.

Klees’ record as a cabinet minister stretched back to the Mike Harris administration, and as an MPP he helped expose the ORNGE scandal. He was also a harsh critic of the Metrolinx Presto fare card program, and the $700 million cost of instituting the transit fare integration system.

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Twice Klees ran for the party’s provincial leadership, most recently losing to Tim Hudak in 2009.

In January, Klees announced he wouldn’t seek re-election, and was succeeded by Twinney, a town councillor in Newmarket.

Ballard is a King City native and former Aurora town councillor who also worked as a journalist for community papers in Newmarket and Aurora.

Angus Duff, who ran for the New Democrats, is an associate business professor at Trent University’s Oshawa campus.

In contrast, Munro returned for another run in York-Simcoe, a sprawling riding that stretches from East and West Gwillimbury in the south to Innisfil in the North, and encompasses the Holland Marsh and the Georgina Island First Nations Reserve.

In all-candidates meetings leading up to the election, York-Simcoe residents voiced concerns about low voter turnout, and about encroaching suburbanization threatening the area’s agriculture.

In 2011 Munro won 52.7 percent of the vote in claiming the seat. Thursday night, with 130 of 228 polls reporting, she had earned 39.5 per cent.

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Munro is a Georgina resident who has served as an MPP since 1995.

Liberal candidate Loralea Carruthers is a York District School Board trustee who lives in Holland Landing and has served as the vice president of the Ontario Public School Boards Association. She earned just over 34 percent of the vote.

Another Holland Landing resident, Laura Bowman, ran for the NDP. Bowman works as an environmental lawyer and civil litigator, and has volunteered on various NDP campaigns since 2003.

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